There are so many things which I’d like to say. However, now I am falling just short of finding the words to articulate these things. I never really believed that some thoughts were inexpressible. I’m learning much about life lately. It seems a bit late for a grammar school education about Getting Along in Life. Today’s lesson is about being tongue-tied, mute, unable to find the expressions, analogies and idioms to translate the thoughts spinning in my head into English. I’m writing this on Friday, the eighth of October. If you’ve been following, you will recognise that day as being singularly significant. Not to put too fine a point on it, one month ago my wife went to claim her reward.

Yes, today is a bit of a hard day. I arose early and called in to the office after 08:00 to beg a day off. I have music and pictures to prepare for the memorial service tomorrow. Our office staff have been infinitely understanding and supportive. Lorraine Collins, a dear friend who lived in Madang for some time has flown in from Cairns to come to the service and stay a few days in the company of old friends. She came over to have lunch with me. Afterward, we watched a movie. I was glad for the company and the distraction.

It’s a good thing that I did have company today. I would otherwise buried myself in work and not have had the chance to sit with a friend and quietly talk about what is happening to all of us. It is a shared experience. I can’t imagine that it would be more intimate if I were were with my blood family. So, speaking of things left to do today, I’ll get on with tomorrow’s post. Yes, I’m writing this on Friday. I’ll schedule the post to go out tomorrow. I do not know what tomorrow will bring to me.

I took a couple of hours of otherwise wasted time last night to do something other than attempting to sleep. It seemed mindless, but more emotionally useful to look through images from past posts and turn them into fake art. Sometimes it is better to do something completely useless. It gives one the feeling of wasting time usefully. And so, since I can’t transfer my feelings to the computer screen, I’ll give you fake art instead.

Honey and I got along well. This may have been because, in horse years, she is my age. We understood each other. Most of these images will require you to click to enlarge to see the effect of the Photoshop filters which I used to create the fake art images. This one had a light treatment with Poster Edges, just enough to punch up the edges a little and give it some texture.

I finished all of my chatter at the beginning, so I’ll simply show you the rest of the images with my brief comments about how I made them.

This is a shot of a diver’s bubbles with a glass block effect applied:

It is more interesting if you enlarge it.

When we were in Fiji earlier this year I got this image of Bougainvillia overhanging the hotel pool. It’s a delicious mix of colours made all the more yummy but the Watercolour filter:

Reducing the number of colour values in the image by increasing the posterisation effect in the filter creates some interesting patterns in the water.

This is a more severe flogging of the image with the Poster Edges filter. It is very posterised, using only a few colours from the millions available. The edges are extremely accentuated. This gives a nice poster effect.

Here are some orchids from my garden. I wanted a mild distortion effect, in this case the Watercolour filter, and I also wanted to bring the flowers dramatically forward in the image:

The Watercolour filter worked a treat. Bringing the flowers forward proved to be far simpler than I had thought it would be. All I had to do was reduce the saturation of the green tones in the background, reducing them to near monochrome. This piece turned out better than I though it would.

This Phyllidia ocellata nudibranch makes a perfect subject for a cut out. The black background makes the absurd colours of this outlandish critter pop:

Nice design for a black t-shirt, eh? A touch of the Poster Edges filter gave the nudi an interesting texture.

Finally, I’ll toss in another nice piece by Lindsay Smith. Take note that I do not include Lindsay’s work in the fake art category. Lindsay actually sketches. Oh, that I had such talent:

Lindsay sketched this lovely lady over a background of my image of an oil slick on the water in front of my house. I enjoy seeing such imaginative uses of my photographs.

Examples of Photoshop Artistic and Brush Stroke Filter Effects This one is going to make you wonder. My primary graphics arts workstation recently turned belly-up and went “pop”. When rebuilding it, I discovered, to my dismay, that I’d lost a few folders because I did not have them clicked for backup. Horrors! A SYSADMIN lost some files – not...

Fake Art For Sanity’s Sake Get out to raise a ruckus and create chaos every day and then fly back to the nest and watch it on the news - that's my idea of the proper life for a man....

Faking It – Four Views of Firenza 6:00 AM. Mind is a blank. No good light outside. Must write – discipline requires it. I started to reminisce. That usually produces something. Thinking back to when we travelled down to Tuscany from Vienna with Claudia Spitzl and her companion Helmut, I looked through my photo archives for something interesting....

The Lorikeet from Hell A good night’s sleep does wonders, doesn’t it? I feel like an art project today. Many years ago I snapped this pretty lame photo of a scraggly lorikeet in some European aviary. I think it was maybe a little sick. Its feathers are in disarray: I used to keep lorikeets...

A Week Into 2009 Tugboats, mountains, a flaming sunrise, and a weird Photoshop filter. Find a dog's breakfast of miscellanea today with author, photographer and professional egotist, Jan Messersmith...

The Big Canvas You cannot have followed this journal for long without surmising that I’m a sky freak. I didn’t think much about meteorology until I became a helicopter pilot. Then I became fascinated by the sky. Today we went out to Pig Island for our regular Saturday outing on the briny deep....

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 9th, 2010 at 10:22 am and is filed under Mixed Nuts, Photography Tricks.
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10 Responses to “The Wonderful Distraction – Fake Art”

Hope today/tomorrow is survivable.( not sure where things are at with date lines and all) Enjoyed the pics. Really liked the diver’s bubbles with glass block, are you selling prints?
Prayers as always, especially over the next few days.

Carol Beth, I’ve lost all ability to judge time. I think that it must be a part of what’s happening to me. I look at the calendar and see that it’s been a month, but it feels like an age. And yet, if feels like nothing. It’s a very strange sensation.

Kristy, somehow I got through it and it was very beneficial to me. I’m going to write about it soon. I got some much needed relief. I was beginning to think that I was not able to grieve properly. Now I know that I can. It’s just the beginning.

I tried making prints to sell. If I were located in a place where I could market them, I’d probably be able to make some money. I ended up giving them all away as gifts for special occasions. If you like something and want to make a print, feel free to do so. If you need higher resolution images, let me know. I’ll email them to you.

Glad/sad to hear there was relief for you during the service. Hopefully more relief for sleep as well.
THX I will look into getting a print, perhaps there is some way to market your prints through a more centrally located source…such as flickr? smugmug? I thought that if you order through them, they print and send it? Pbase is another one, I have been perusing galleries there and notice that there appear to be ways to purchase copies there.

Jan, Using your talents to make photos into art is not using up time but using your talent to help us see even more of the beauty in things, creatures, buildings, etc.
God has given you a talent that blesses those who see it, including me.
May you feel each day the comfort you need. We were with you in spirit on the 9th and will continue to pray for you daily. Ruth (Gerald too)

Thanks, Ruth, for remind me that it’s not a waste of time when one provides entertainment and pleasure for friends through art, no matter how fake it is. The 9th was hard, but went well and I did get some relief in the form of tears. I will write about it soon.